The $4-trillion-per-year federal government works incessantly against the private sector. Likely no wing is more pernicious than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

On his way to prison for defrauding taxpayers out of more than $1 million, former high-level EPA official Jon Beale said that while at the agency he was: “working on a ‘project’ examining ways to ‘modify the DNA of the capitalist system.’ He argued that environmental regulation was reaching its ‘limits’…so he began working on his plan.”

Which, thankfully, was eventually scrapped. But how obnoxious is the EPA – and how much free time does it have – to even consider, let alone work on, such a plan?

Idle bureaucrat hands are the Devil’s playground. There are more than 800,000 federal government employees – that the employer its own self deems “non-essential.” Get that? The Feds have hired almost a million people – they themselves say are totally superfluous.

We have far too many bureaucrats – with nigh nothing to do. So they start looking for things to do – like trying to “modify the DNA of the capitalist system.”

Rather than assigning them things to do, or allowing them to go on these regulatory spelunking forays – how about we scrap their gigs? And while we’re at it – the agencies in which they work? Because if these agencies green light these sorts of regulatory search-and-destroy missions, they have no productive work to do – and thus shouldn’t exist.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’d all-but-shutter the EPA: “‘Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations. They’re making it impossible…’ (Fox News’ Chris) Wallace interjected, ‘Who’s going to protect the environment?’ ‘They – we’ll be fine with the environment,’ Trump replied. ‘We can leave a little bit, but you can’t destroy businesses.’”

Trump, by the way, also wants to close the Department of Education: “‘I believe that we should be – you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education.’”

Trump is, of course, absolutely right. And that local solution for education – is the same solution for the environment. Nigh all fifty states have some bureaucratic iteration of both Education and the EPA. So why are there completely redundant, fifty-first entities in Washington?

Iowa’s version of the EPA and Hawaii’s version know how to handle their respective issues far better than does the bureaucracy in far-off DC. The fifty states can each tailor their policies to their very different climates, topographies and industries.

DC’s EPA can only issue one-size-fits-all mandates – which never fit anyone anywhere. And these mandates have to be overreaching enough to consume and cover the biggest states – which of course crushes all the rest.

Trump should thus realize – we don’t even need to “leave a little bit” of the federal EPA.

Also because as happens with all things DC, the “little bit” you leave behind – will eventually grow back into the monstrosity with which we are currently afflicted. So end it – don’t mend it.

All the while, the DC EPA continues to inexorably stray ever further from any tether to legislation passed by Congress. But one example is its repeated, vast unilateral expansions of its powers under the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) law. Courts have repeatedly rebuked the EPA – but why would bored bureaucrats allow either the law or the courts to rein them in? So they’ve expanded yet again – even further than ever before.

Trump gets this too: “‘The President can go in and tell the director of the EPA to eliminate the Waters of the U.S. rules,’ he says. ‘We will get through the abuse of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, which is taking place through the EPA, and we will eliminate those abuses. We think the Waters of the U.S. is an enormous overreach, and it needs to be eliminated.’”

President Trump should absolutely shut down these WOTUS abuses – but he shouldn’t stop there. He should shut down entirely the agency engaged in this obnoxiousness. The EPA absolutely needs to go. And, thankfully, it will be one of the easiest of all of them to close.

I couldn’t believe that Nixon, a Republican, was behind the creation of this bureaucratic abortion. Federal EPA inspectors measuring the toilet seats in our bathrooms at work to insure they meet EPA Standards ! What a joke !
I’m all in favor of getting the Federal Government out of our education system, the main reason why School Taxes are the largest tax obligation for most homeowners ! However I also don’t have much confidence in the Local Yahoos who are repeatedly elected to our School Boards, teacher salaries remain virtually flat while the budget for new sports complexes skyrockets every year !

BonLovesFreedom

Teachers salaries remain flat? Not where I live, RLTMLT. I know an elementary teacher personally and the gross yearly salary is $68k with something like 20 excused absences, excellent medical insurance, and 2 1/2 months off.
Totally agree with eliminating the federal EPA and DOE. Each state is responsible and has agencies in place. They both have certainly done more harm than good during the past 8 years.

RLTMLT

I don’t doubt that there are exceptions to the rule for teacher salaries and benefits but the majority of the people I have talked with seem to feel that, in general, teachers are not being fully compensated for the crap they have to put up with from a growing number of undisciplined Liberal brats ! I’m betting that your real concern is teacher’s unions that regularly push for unnecessary increases in salaries and benefits to justify their existence. Considering that School Taxes have long been one of the biggest Tax obligations that home owners have to live with, I can’t disagree with you. Removing the Federal Government’s meddling in the running of our public schools would, in general, resolve a lot of ongoing problems.
I’m not sure what the DOE even does any more. If you go to the DOE Web Site, their mission statement sounds like they are now, among other questionable responsibilities, officially charged with promoting the Liberal Climate Change movement, a Malthusian cult that has been pushing depopulation of the planet for over 200 years to save Mother Earth ! The DOE would best serve the citizen’s of this country by joining and participating in ongoing foreign efforts to develop a centralized Fusion Power System that would interface with our existing power network. China, through it’s various moon missions, has discovered an inexhaustible source of a common element that could be used to fuel the Fusion Process, a process that will be far safer and more efficient than existing Nuclear Power Plants !

tchrjim

Before I retired, I was a teacher. We went 5 years without a raise. In one District in Florida, in 2001 a beginning teacher made 30,000.00 per year. Ten years later that same teacher, now with ten years on the job, was making 35,000.00 per year. Not much change for the experience. In 1980 Ronald Reagan tried to close the Education Department. He hired Bill Bennett to be the Secretary of Education with the mandate to close the department and put himself out of a job. The Teachers Union and the Federal Government employees union, and departmental inertia defeated all attempts to get rid of the department. The best he could do was to get rid of most of the regulatory processes by giving the States and Districts block grants that allowed the districts to be able to determine how best to allocate the funds. Sadly, each year thereafter, more and more of the old regulations were put back in place so that after Reagan’s tenure, the DOE was back at its old powerful self. The Federal Departments are like a cancer. They do continually grow until they overpower a body’s ability to thrive. You never want to just cut out 90% of a cancer. You know that the whole cancer will eventually grow back, and you will die. The country existed for centuries without the DOE, EPA, and several other departments. We still can.

John Chism

I believe it. You forget that Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican that the most of the Republican Party wouldn’t support, he created the Progressive Party and by 1912 a lot of Western Territories joined the USA that to become State’s had their land’s divided into Federal Land and Park’s under the control’s of the Federal Departments BLM and USFS. And a lot of Western State’s have giant Indian Reservations that are Federally controlled. When people think of Progressive they always think that’s the Left-wing, only because that’s where they went under FDR and grew the Democratic Party. Then along comes Nixon and the Bush family.

RLTMLT

True, Progressive has become a nebulas term and one version being used to specify a moderate wing of the Democrat Party !

tchrjim

There are solutions to climate change, we just choose to work on the wrong ones. First, we have to take the wobble out of Earth’s spin. Then we have to stabilize Earth’s orbit around the sun. Third, we have to build a giant shield to protect Earth against Solar flares and other changes in Solar energy output. Fourth, we need to regulate Earth’s core temperature and the movement of Earth’s plates. and last, we need to manage the electromagnetic field around Earth. With just these five simple adjustments, we can have a more constant Earth climate. Now, isn’t that simple?

RLTMLT

Never said it was simple, and we’re sure as hell not going to resolve it with long discarded technologies from the mid 20th century and earlier. But first of all, we need to determine if the current problem is not a manufactured one. Most evidence points to a so-called problem invented by a Liberal Academic Sector receiving generous research grants from a Liberal Government that has limited those awards to those individuals that are focused on Global Warming or Climate Change or what ever it’s being called this week ! Anything that the Liberal Media and Liberal entertainment sector pursues has got to be viewed with a large helping of skepticism !

Karll

Dump the EPA, along with several other useless depts
and agencies that do more harm than good.
Make those bureaucrats unemployed.

Texas Belle

Imagine the hew and cry if Trump took out the EPA. That is a sacred cow to tree huggers and climate change believers. They would call for his impeachment. So be it; let them squirm and yell.

cmi

Trump should shut the worthless EPA down!!!! All in the hell it does is soak up tax money!!!!!

Robert

I do believe the EPA is under Congressional control not Presidential control, and yes there ere a lot of things in the EPA that are worthless but if it were not there then the river and such would become polluted again and industrial waste would be dumped every where. Here we go Cherry Picking about a good agency that needs some modifying, bur not done away with. If it were not for the EPA the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland would be one big septic tank and most rivers would be polluted by corporations wanting to get rid of costly waste disposal.
Why is it you only see the bad side of anything and not the whole picture.
HAVE A GOOD DAY

Joe Toland

Great! We need smaller government. All they do is sit in offices and think of things to make it hard on working class people and make more money for them. Drain the swamp!